Category Archives: Social Media

Breather is a cool service where you can rent a space by the hour with an app and unlock the door with your phone! How cool is that!

As I write this post, they have more than 150 awesome locations in 6 cities and distributed in 101 commercial buildings.

Recently, CEO Julien Smith ask publicly (on Facebook it’s pretty much public): how many time it would take them to reach 800 buildings.

Challenge accepted Julien. So here is my answer.

Data Gathering

First, I scrapped trough your insightfull blog and all your newsletters that I received since 2013 (Yes, I am a keeper) for information on launch dates for breather spaces. I only found out 56 of them. Is that because some are kept secret?

Anyways, I made some fair estimations on real growth time to reach 101 buildings in 27 months.

Breather Solution for the nonlienear Schrödinger equation

Wikipedia will teach us that:

In physics, a breatheris a nonlinearwave in which energy concentrates in a localized and oscillatory fashion. This contradicts with the expectations derived from the corresponding linear system for infinitesimalamplitudes, which tends towards an even distribution of initially localized energy.

Unfortunately, although it seems pretty much interesting, this has nothing to do with our actual problem.

Bacteria Growth Analogy with a Sigmoid Function

This time is for real. Now let’s assume for a moment that Julien’s plan to conquer the world will react as a bacteria population!

Because as people tend to forget is that at a certain point in time, Breather Spaces will start to disappear: an end of a lease, a fire, a company moving out, a less profitable location, competition for the food (or the locations) and so on. So as time goes by, growth will become harder and harder.

Bacteria growth will follow a sigmoid function similar to this one:

[UPDATE]

The general form of this equation is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalised_logistic_function

[UPDATE]

By setting some parameters in the equation, I ended up with this equation:

where A = 4, B = 200, C = 1, D = -8. x=t

[UPDATE 2017-02-22]

Still working!

[UPDATE 2017-05-24]

Slighlty behind schedule. According to the model, they should have reach 415 location by now. They are at 381. The next inflexion point should be at Month 50 meaing by the end of 2017.

[UPDATE 2017-07-02]

I made a correction in my month calculation. It seems that I wasa bit « off ». Here a the latest results:

[UPDATE 2018-03-08]

It’s the first time that my calculation is wrong. What’s happening! Let’s wait another 6 month to see if it is just a glitch.

[UPDATE 2018-10-12]

Hum, This graph tells me that they must closing some not profitable spaces. :(.

This also could be related to their new service « Breather Office » for monthly leases. My guess is that if a company such as Google rent a space for 12 month, may it’s hidden on the breather web site. They are some redundancy between the 2 sites.

This will be the last update since the Sigmoid function model is clearly not working anymore with the basics « breather spaces » originally calculated.

This article is a book review of The Impact Equationby Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. My review might not be the greatest of them all but it is mine. It is not a long review, it’s more like a personal appreciation. So here it is

The Impact Equation

I do love EQUATIONS! Trust me I am an engineer! So I start to read this book looking for formulas! But Chris and Julien have that particular talent to write about complex things and translate it in such a way that you can actually make things happen.

Was I disapointed not finding tons of equations? Not really! Instead, It made me think of my actual web strategy and I implement changes right away!

Often, books like The Impact Equation suggests reflexions, excercices, etc. With The Impact Equation: I did them all! I even wrote IN THE BOOK with a pen! (I usually never do that)

Photos with text

The authors asked us to create photos with our favorite quotes from the book.

I think it’s a great idea. Once again, I think my choices of quotes might not be the greatest of them all, but I like to think that they were more than noise and that some of them will have an impact. I can say for a fact that one of them sold one more book from a friend of mine who told me!

Once upon a time there was the Internet. Then came Yahoo, then Google and after that Facebook. Also, at one point, Adult content became very very popular even though nobody is visiting those sites (must be only robots I guess).

One of my favorite cartoons is Asterix. And especially the now famous words of the Roman soldier.

« Uncle Lothars wants you! » – A Roman in rather bad shape.

A blog differs mainly from a social network because what we write belongs to us (I think!). Social networks are here to help share information and it is quite possible that a blog is not for you (at least the writing part).

While we continue to encourage reading, commenting and sharing our posts (starting with this one). There is also on the right, a wonderful selection of blogs written by (real) friends of mine.
You can also subscribe to my blog (to the right as well), you’ll see it’s not complicated!

A group of interacting people, that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion

Now, I skipped every notion of geographical aspect. These days, even though more and more people are using Facebook Places, Foursquare, Apple Friend or Google Friend Connect, we are part of many communities simultaneously in which our actual physical location doesn’t mather!

Facebook, Twitter, Wow, Doa, my blog subscribers (you are not many but you’ll become legion!), are different communities with different values or goals.

Let’s talk about each of them:

Facebook is a kind of Perpetual High School Reunion.

Twitter is a Live Happy Hour.

Wow or DOA are « Cheap » Virtual Version of the Matrix in a Fantasy World.

Have you seen lately a funny link on facebook where your distant cousin or your mother’s best friend like a video titled « she takes of her shirt in front of the class »? Sounds like a scam: you bet it is!

Have you read lately a close friend who is posting something copied from someone else like « if you love your mother, share… »‘,

sickness, death itself, share…? Sounds useful? You bet it isn’t.

Here are a few advises:

if you love your mother, tell her in person

if you want to help a cause:

donate

become involve: they love that even more

share, like, fan, +1 and comment real accomplishments:

a friend is writing a blog

your sister has founded her own business of ecological hand craft soaps

a long time no see high school buddy is performing in an obscur heavy metal pop retro mod band (don’t forget to buy their album, believe me, they need your share more than Madonna or Simple Plan)

etc.

if you reshare something:

give credit to the author of the post

add your comment

think of your audience (facebook lists and google+ circle are made for that